It’s a joy to even have the opportunity to write this. After all the madness back home, I was wondering if I’d ever get the chance to find a home in logic again, and yet here I am, on Chimera itself, research assistant to the most important project in sane human history.
The ecological diversity of this planet is already fairly impressive. But we haven’t come here to look at the various beetles, cranes, and trees, no, no, no. We’ve come here for an altogether different creature: the Savan. They abide by no traditional taxonomy, appearing in our sequences to be a product of hyper advanced genetic manipulation, centuries ahead of what we might be capable of. But, and this is a very important but, they demonstrate many of the same genetic markers as you or me. There’s more similarity in our DNA and the genetic code found in these large, silicate insects, than there is between man and his fellow Earth borne primates. And they do not die.
Just let that sink in. A creature utterly like humanity, if not in physical form, that simply cannot die.
No matter what stimulus the subject is exposed to, even indirect explosions from conventional weaponry, they never die. At worst, they enter a catatonic state wherein they attempt to burrow into the floor of the experimentation room, and, inevitably failing to do so, curl into a sheer ball of silicate despair.
As long as the Savan are given proper nutrition, the teleomeres in their rather rigid cells do not shorten. Not even slightly. Granted, we have not had one on hand long enough to confirm the models with reality, but given the apparent age of all available subjects (the youngest of which being ninety-three), it is safe to say that these creatures are more venerable than any of the sapient life thus far encountered in our time traveling the void.
I know I’m gonna look a bit like ICarus flying too close to the sun by saying this, but the establishment of this research facility might be the final thing to put human mortality in the bag, provide us with a much more stable solution that that inflicted on our ancestors. Of course, given the sheer strategic import of the question, we’ve been authorized to use means possible to extract data from this site, as rapidly as possible. Our patrons are, reasonably so, concerned with the plight of human death, and it would not behoove us to make our stockholders wait.
But, regardless of the financial incentives behind it all, I must confess that my very blood is boiling at the prospect. It’s as though I’ve got a coffee dispenser strapped directly into my veins like an IV drip. Not only could I be set for life, that life could be very long, and I would be famous. Everything I’ve ever known I’ve desired in life, handed to me on a silver platter. Handed to us all.
But I’ve been on the vagaries a bit too long. Now we get to specifics, and the details are just as encouraging. I have been assigned jurisdiction over test subject 798, a female Savan of the fairly young age of two hundred and thirteen standard years. Compared to the other samples available, I must admit it’s a bit of a letdown. The fellows over in sector 14B have one estimated at age 793 on their hands. But, given my relative inexperience with all of this, as this is, well, only my third mission as a subdirector, I must admit there’s a lot of pride welling up in my stomach. If things go according to plan, and they should, there’ll be some grand monument erected at the capital that’ll haave my name carved into it. And that’ll be a monument that I myself will be able to visit on the regular, checking the inscription and wondering whether or not the inscription will fade before I die.
Test subject 798… I can’t wait to begin.